AMD has gained considerable market share in the budget computing segment since last year's launch of the Llano APU, with "good enough" CPU performance balanced with entry discreet level graphics to boot. After the uncompetitive showing of Bulldozer with their FX enthusiast chips and Opterons, followed by harrowing departures of historically key personnel, the remaining team went back to the drawing board and made a few tweaks to their 32nm BD core architecture. Their efforts resulted in Piledriver, which will debut with the 2012 Trinity Mobile APUs today and then feature in server and desktop product refreshes later this year. Is this the light at the end of the tunnel or just another epic facepalm for AMD?

Introduction

AMD's 2012 Consumer top to bottom VISION product positioning with FX CPUs for the enthusiasts, Trinity APUs for the mainstream and Brazos for the entry level.

Summary of Trinity APU improvements – now using "Piledriver" modules (2nd generation of Bulldozer, still the obtuse 2 integer/1 FP unit per module design), featuring DDR3-1866 memory support (1600 for notebook) and depending on SKU, up to 384 Radeon "Cores".

Technical Specifications and block diagram of the partitioning inside the die

The desktop APUs are still rated at 100W TDP like Llano models (not too surprising considering that they are both on the same manufacturing process), with 17W/25W/35W models for mobile variants. Operating frequencies are expected to be between 2.0-3.8GHz on the CPU and 424-800MHz on the GPU. FMA3 instruction set (which is the one adopted by Intel on the upcoming Haswell, instead of FMA4 first seen on Bulldozer) makes its debut here. Improved scheduling, branch prediction and prefetcher also account for higher IPC than the Husky cores used in Llano.

Integrated northbridge and memory controller

The new Turbo Core 3.0 now balances power envelope of the CPU/GPU to fit within the TDP, dynamically throttling the clocks to fit the workload profile of the active running application. There is no indication on whether this is handled by hardware or software driver (ahem quack3.exe).

These are the 32nm Trinity mobile SKUs that are officially announced today:

AMD A-Series Mobile APUs (FS1r2 package, 35W TDP, DDR3-1600 support)

Model

GPU

CPU Cores / Modules

CPU Clock (Max/Base)

L2 Cache

Radeon Cores

GPU Clock (Max/Base)

A10-4600M

HD 7660G

4 / 2

3.2 / 2.3 GHz

4MB

384

686 / 497 MHz

A8-4500M

HD 7640G

4 / 2

2.8 / 1.9 GHz

4MB

256

655 / 497 MHz

A6-4400M

HD 7520G

2 / 1

3.2 / 2.7 GHz

1MB

192

686 / 497 MHz

AMD A-Series Mobile LV / ULV APUs (FP2 package, DDR3-1333 support)

Model

GPU

CPU Cores / Modules

CPU Clock (Max/Base)

TDP

L2 Cache

Radeon Cores

GPU Clock (Max/Base)

A10-4655M

HD 7620G

4 / 2

3.2 / 2.3 GHz

25W

4MB

384

497 / 360 MHz

A6-4455M

HD 7500G

2 / 1

2.8 / 1.9 GHz

17W

2MB

256

424 / 327 MHz

Expect to see desktop Trinity APUs surfacing in the next quarter, with the chips using the new FM2 socket and motherboards.